The English Gipsies and Their Language | Page 4

roots, and that man English born; though it was
probably in the open air, and English bred, albeit his breeding was of
the roads.
For go where you will, though you may not know it, you encounter at
every step, in one form or the other, the Rommany. True, the dwellers
in tents are becoming few and far between, because the "close
cultivation" of the present generation, which has enclosed nearly all the
waste land in England, has left no spot in many a day's journey, where
"the travellers," as they call themselves, can light the fire and boil the
kettle undisturbed. There is almost "no tan to hatch," or place to stay in.
So it has come to pass, that those among them who cannot settle down
like unto the Gentiles, have gone across the Great Water to America,
which is their true Canaan, where they flourish mightily, the more
enterprising making a good thing of it, by prastering graias or "running
horses," or trading in them, while the idler or more moral ones, pick up
their living as easily as a mouse in a cheese, on the endless roads and in
the forests. And so many of them have gone there, that I am sure the
child is now born, to whom the sight of a real old-fashioned gipsy will
be as rare in England as a Sioux or Pawnee warrior in the streets of
New York or Philadelphia. But there is a modified and yet real
Rommany-dom, which lives and will live with great vigour, so long as
a regularly organised nomadic class exists on our roads--and it is the
true nature and inner life of this class which has remained for ages, an
impenetrable mystery to the world at large. A member of it may be a
tramp and a beggar, the proprietor of some valuable travelling show, a
horse-dealer, or a tinker. He may be eloquent, as a Cheap Jack, noisy as
a Punch, or musical with a fiddle at fairs. He may "peddle" pottery,
make and sell skewers and clothes-pegs, or vend baskets in a caravan;
he may keep cock-shys and Aunt Sallys at races. But whatever he may
be, depend upon it, reader, that among those who follow these and
similar callings which he represents, are literally many thousands who,
unsuspected by the Gorgios, are known to one another, and who still
speak among themselves, more or less, that curious old tongue which

the researches of the greatest living philologists have indicated, is in all
probability not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point of age, an
elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient language.
For THE ROMMANY is the characteristic leaven of all the real tramp
life and nomadic callings of Great Britain. And by this word I mean not
the language alone, which is regarded, however, as a test of superior
knowledge of "the roads," but a curious inner life and freemasonry of
secret intelligence, ties of blood and information, useful to a class who
have much in common with one another, and very little in common
with the settled tradesman or worthy citizen. The hawker whom you
meet, and whose blue eyes and light hair indicate no trace of Oriental
blood, may not be a churdo, or pash-ratt, or half-blood, or half-scrag,
as a full Gipsy might contemptuously term him, but he may be, of his
kind, a quadroon or octoroon, or he may have "gipsified," by marrying
a Gipsy wife; and by the way be it said, such women make by far the
best wives to be found among English itinerants, and the best suited for
"a traveller." But in any case he has taken pains to pick up all the Gipsy
he can. If he is a tinker, he knows Kennick, or cant, or thieves' slang by
nature, but the Rommany, which has very few words in common with
the former, is the true language of the mysteries; in fact, it has with him
become, strangely enough, what it was originally, a sort of sacred
Sanscrit, known only to the Brahmins of the roads, compared to which
the other language is only commonplace Prakrit, which anybody may
acquire.
He is proud of his knowledge, he makes of it a deep mystery; and if
you, a gentleman, ask him about it, he will probably deny that he ever
heard of its existence. Should he be very thirsty, and your manners
frank and assuring, it is, however, not impossible that after draining a
pot of beer at your expense, he may recall, with a grin, the fact that he
has heard that the Gipsies have a queer kind of language of their own;
and then, if you have any Rommany yourself at command, he will
perhaps rakker Rommanis